National Alliance, launched in 1994, was officially founded in January 1995, when the Italian Social Movement (MSI), the former neo-fascist party, merged with conservative elements of the former Christian Democracy, which had disbanded in 1994 after two years of scandals and various splits due to corruption at its highest levels, exposed by the Mani pulite investigation, and the Italian Liberal Party, disbanded in the same year. Former MSI members were however still the bulk of the new party and former MSI leader Gianfranco Fini was elected leader of the new party.

The AN logo followed a template very similar to that of the Democratic Party of the Left, with the logo of the direct predecessor party in a small circle, as a means of legally preventing others from using it. The name was suggested by an article on the Italian newspaper Il Tempo written in 1992 by Domenico Fisichella, a prominent conservative academic. Starting in the 1990s, the MSI gradually transformed into a mainstream right-wing party, culminating in its 1995 dissolution into AN.

When Gianfranco Fini visited Israel in late November 2003 in the function of Italian Deputy Prime Minister, he labeled the racial laws issued by the fascist regime in 1938 as "infamous", as also Giorgio Almirante, historic leader of MSI, had done before.[11] He also referred to the Italian Social Republic as belonging to the most shameful pages of the past, and considered fascism part of an era of "absolute evil", something which was hardly acceptable to the few remaining hardliners of the party. As a result, Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who had been at odds with the party on a number of issues for a long time, and some hardliners left the party and formed Social Action.[7][12]

In occasion of the 2006 general election, AN ran within the House of Freedoms, with new allies. The centre-right lost by 24,000 votes in favour of the centre-left coalition The Union. Individually AN received nearly 5 million votes, amounting to 12.3%. In July 2007 a group of splinters led by Francesco Storace formed The Right, which was officially founded on 10 November. Seven MPs of AN, including Teodoro Buontempo and Daniela Santanchè, joined the new party.

After the sudden fall of the second Prodi government in January 2008, the breakup of The Union and the subsequent political crisis which led to a fresh general election, Berlusconi hinted that Forza Italia would have probably contested its last election and the new party would have been officially founded only after that election. In an atmosphere of reconciliation with Gianfranco Fini, Berlusconi also stated that the new party could see the participation of other parties.[16] Finally, on 8 February, Berlusconi and Fini agreed to form a joint list under the banner of the "The People of Freedom", allied with Lega Nord.[17] After the victory of the PdL in the 2008 general election, AN was merged into the PdL in early 2009.[18]

Regarding institutional reforms, the party was a long-time supporter of presidentialism and a plurality voting system, and came to support also federalism and to fully accept the alliance with Lega Nord, although the relations with that party were tense at times, especially about issues regarding national unity.

Gianfranco Fini, a moderniser who saw Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron as role-models, impressed an ambitious political line to the party, combining the pillars of conservative ideology like security, family values and patriotism with a progressive approach in other areas such as stem cell research and supporting voting rights for legal aliens. Some of these positions were not shared by many members of the party, most of whom staunchly opposed stem cell research and artificial insemination.[12]

D-Destra, led by Francesco Storace, was the most conservative component of the party, proud of the MSI's tradition and in open opposition to Fini. Formed as a split from the Social Right, in July 2007 the group finally left AN and launched The Right.

In the party there was also a group named Ethic-Religious Council, whose board members included Gaetano Rebecchini (founder, ex-DC), Riccardo Pedrizzi (president), Franco Tofoni (vice president), Luigi Gagliardi (secretary-general), Alfredo Mantovano, Antonio Mazzocchi and Riccardo Migliori. This was not a faction but an official organism within the party and expressed the official position of the party on ethical and religious matters. Sometimes the group criticized Gianfranco Fini for his liberal views on abortion, artificial insemination and stem-cell research, which led some notable ex-DC members as Publio Fiori to leave the party. Some members of the Council, such as Pedrizzi and Mantovano were described as members of an unofficial Catholic Right faction.

The party had a good showing in the first general election to which it took part (13.5% in 1994) and reached 15.7% in 1996, when Fini tried for the first time to replace Silvio Berlusconi as leader of the centre-right. From that moment the party suffered an electoral decline, but remained the third force of Italian politics.

In the 2006 general election, the final election to which the party participated with its own list, AN won 12.3% of the vote, securing 71 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 41 in the Senate. In the 2008 general election the party got 90 deputies[20] and 48 senators[21] elected.

The electoral results of National Alliance in the 10 most populated regions of Italy are shown in the table below.